Not So Fast: Councilman Kenney Not Ready for Marijuana Legalization

On Tuesday, Philadelphia City Councilman Jim Kenney announced that he was introducing a bill to eliminate mandatory arrests for possessions of small amounts of marijuana. Why should we take two cops off the street for hours just because they find some dude with a joint? he reasons. Plus, there’s the issue of the “statistically implied discriminatory nature” of marijuana arrests.

And after we published that story, there came this “LEGALIZE NOW!” tweet from the official Twitter account of Councilman Kenney:

Did one of City Council’s most prominent members really just call for immediate marijuana legalization? Apparently not.

Shortly after Councilman Kenney’s Twitter feed tweeted “LEGALIZE NOW!”, that tweet was deleted. In the middle of Tuesday’s snowstorm, I asked the Councilman why he deleted the tweet. His reply via Twitter: “Didn’t tweet it. Didn’t remove it. One step at a time.”

So was Councilman Kenney’s Twitter account HACKED?! Or maybe one of his pro-marijuana legalization staffers tweeted and deleted it?

“Does he have kids?” asked my editor, half-jokingly wondering if one of them might have jumped on to the old man’s Twitter account.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time that Councilman Kenney’s Twitter account made news. (Remember the time that he called someone “a very large asshole“?)

Kenney pleads ignorance in reference to the marijuana legalization tweet: “No one I know did it, so I really don’t know.”

Meanwhile, as of Tuesday evening, 54% of those who voted in our marijuana legalization poll said that they should be able to smoke marijuana “pretty much anywhere.” Today, the results are slightly different, with the majority of voters saying that they should be able to smoke marijuana “at home only.” But nearly all (95%) are clearly in favor of marijuana legalization:

So are you pro-marijuana legalization? Anti-marijuana legalization? Somewhere in between? Vote here.